The Number VII
by sanctum-c
Summary: Did anyone else have to live in fear for the fate of a cosy life, the assembled family and modest life built from the ruins of Shinra's heyday; the worst of the bad days - when he could lose everything? The day his family inevitably found out the truth.


Written for the prompt: _Set postgame in Edge, but Cloud actually WAS just a clone they uploaded memories to, and the real Cloud died ages ago. No one else knows it but him and he's been living a lie afraid of being rejected if they actually found out. Maybe Avalanche finds out, maybe they don't, either's fine. Would prefer Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core not mentioned._

* * *

Life never became comfortable. Everyone had good days and bad days. But did anyone else worry a bad day might become worse, that one day they would wind up alone, the world hostile and alien to them? Did anyone else have to live in fear for the fate of a cosy life, the assembled family and modest life built from the ruins of Shinra's heyday; the worst of the bad days - when he could lose everything? The day his family inevitably found out the truth.

Most days contained little to worry about. Not as if he could not remember what happened, or how to speak, or people's names. But if conversation turned towards Nibelheim, or life as a member of the Shinra infantry, or his childhood, it became difficult to remain calm. These conversations remained rare; that part of life not the most comfortable for Tifa to revisit so she also rarely dwelled on it.

Until Tifa got into painting and had the idea to paint Nibelheim. But not Nibelheim as it currently existed; an elaborate, careful - if flawed – facsimile of the original. Tifa wanted to render the town she and Cloud lived in as children. All too aware of the unpleasantness lurking under the surface there. Jenova too close for comfort and the nearby abandoned mansion the site of so many atrocities.

Thankfully Tifa's idealised vision was of the view from her bedroom window. Out towards the water tower, to the town gates and to the distant hills, her back to the horrors of the past. Cloud's house was - strictly speaking - not visible in this view of the town, but Tifa toyed with including it. "What colour was your front door?"

This question he could answer. "Blue."

Tifa nodded, scrawling a note on the sketch. "And the one across the street from you; Mrs. Almasy's?"

Panic. An answer bubbled up. The right answer? Taking too long, too much internal debate. Too many worries about accuracy. "Green." A brief glimpse when they reached Nibelheim during their pursuit of Sephiroth.

"Green?" Tifa glanced up at him. Stomach lurching, panic setting in. Tensing to run, to flee. Trigger the plans he never wanted to. "Your memory's better than mine. I couldn't decide between white or black." She smiled. "Thank you."

He trusted Tifa. Had to after so long, after so much time together – both at the near end of everything and in the aftermath. Doubts. Could she remember the colour of Mrs. Almasy's door? Was she prying into those memories with an inkling, or perhaps a certainty of what the truth was? Heart pounding, his throat tight, the walls closing in. He lurched up from the table too quickly, the motion jarring the table and knocking Tifa's pencils to the floor. A beat. "Ow."

"Are you okay?" Tifa leant over to swipe at the fallen pencils.

"Fine." She was distracted. An opportunity to slip away. "I'm going to get something from the shop." Would she ask to come with him? Ask him to pick something up? Lure him into a trap?

"Okay." Still focused on her drawing. He left.

Outside no armed mercenaries waited for him. Pulse still racing. The memory had to be in there. A green door. But had it been before? In the hazy memories. Glimpsed with Zack's arm around his shoulders. Green there too – but the same facsimile. Before that- Could those memories contain such a trivial detail? Could anyone else have answered with certainty?

He started walking, not paying attention to destination, merely needing to move. A childhood in Nibelheim. Cloud Strife had endured fourteen years of such a thing. Years fifteen and sixteen spent failing to become a SOLDIER and relegation to the infantry. After that-

Stupid. Should not dwell on this. But to try not to think about something inevitably invoked a gravity well for his attention. Everything lead back to Nibelheim, to the Shinra mansion. To the lab complex beneath.

He stumbled, but kept on going, into the wilderness, head spinning. The thoughts normally kept at bay until those awful sleepless nights overwhelmed him. Confused sensations of pain, torments, agonies wracking his body. But removed, distant, separate. Lying under the watchful gaze of a hundred Mako eyes, all staring at him unblinking, towering above him. He could not look away. Thousands of blue eyes ringed with Mako, revulsion churning his painfully empty stomach. Worse; the spaces between the eyes. No bodies supported the staring eyes. Instead, exposed organs, sinew and blood vessels, wires, metal plates crammed the spaces between.

Mako eyes staring back from sunken sockets. Blonde hair hung limp, unwashed and dirty. An emaciated form exhibiting none of the tell-tale traits of a SOLDIER only still standing thanks to two lab-coat wearing techs. Tattered rags barely concealed a litany of wounds, scars, welts, burns, sores, abscesses. Rot. The figure would not last long.

Flash of metal in harsh, unyielding light. Clinical indifference as the figure struggled weakly, the two techs strapping him down to an operating table. More metal glinting; scalpels cutting flesh, saws scraping against bone and syringes plunging into what little remained. No way to look away from it, no way to blink. The figure- Why lie? Cloud Strife was surgically disassembled before him. Skin and bone cut and stripped away with uncaring movements.

Cloud's chest heaved, his limbs near limp despite the restraints no matter how deep the blades cut. He whimpered and moaned; no anaesthetic, but no strength to protest. Too much taken from him already, but somehow he hung on. How was anyone's guess. But the fact he could endure this much made him so interesting. At some confused point, Hojo said as much; the reason for Cloud's selection.

Fight back the nausea. Little to do but let the memories flow.

They bound Cloud's eyes with gauze. Something covered his eyes. Blackness, nothing. A flash of green and blue. The stench of Mako and salt.

_Mom was gone. Sephiroth perched above him, his words confusing. What had happened to Tifa? Mom was gone. Carrying Tifa's body to safety at the reactor. The frantic scramble up the trails to the summit of Mount Nibel. What about Tifa? Mom was gone. The smell of smoke, the heat of the fire. Mom. His house on fire and Mom nowhere in sight. Fear. Sephiroth's cryptic words. Sephiroth found in his same lab some uncertain time before._

_Coming home. A long journey in the back of a transport. Tearing open the envelope stamped with the Shinra corporation's logo; the results of his application._

_Arriving in Junon, already smarting from his misunderstanding of where SOLDIER was._

_First time in Midgar, the stench of the Mako._

_First glimpse of Junon from the deck of the ferry._

_Endless hours of travel, days blending into each other._

_A promise from Tifa sitting atop the water tower._

_Another fight._

_A fight._

_Pushing Mom away._

_Tifa awake and about town again._

_Grabbing for Tifa's hand as she slid over the edge of a cliff._

_Tifa sobbing._

_Mom hugging him._

_Mom surprising him on his birthday._

_Mom._

The covering lifted. The lab emptier; no Mako eyes stared back at him. Seeing hurt in the bright light. It helped a little when the lights blinked off, but the pain remained. Low light vision another perk of SOLDIER. Was Tifa okay? The world jostled, vision obscured with white. Dark fell again; a true dark, endless blackness.

The darkness was comforting, even as the pain increased. Even as his senses came in floods of pins and needles and pain. He opened his eyes. Unknown time-spans passed between one blink of his eyes and the next; to close his eyes was to lose everything in between. Speech and coherence beyond him. He moved between eye blinks, never able to catch the change until he stalled in place, the world tinged green, unknown epochs passing with only minor changes past the green. If he had not blinked when Zack broke free of the Mako tubes, he might still be in the lab. Perhaps if things had played out different, he might have blinked awake one day to see Avalanche staring at him in horror and revulsion.

But he had blinked. Enough for his rescue, Zack carrying him through the rebuilt Nibelheim, endless stretches of wilderness as they hurried onto- Where? Midgar. A foolish destination for a profession neither seemed suited. But Zack strove to return and easier to move in that direction. Must not dwell on the next point; the roar of the machine guns, the hideous silence, Zack moving no more.

He needed to keep on moving (where?) but Tifa persuaded to put this goal off. Give up on his mercenary career (lies) for a time, though never able to say where and who he had worked for. He remembered Nibelheim and he remembered Tifa. A promise. A foundation.

And the return visit to Nibelheim, after he and Tifa crawled out of the Lifestream, ripped that foundation away. More than one mystery solved after the visit but no time to dwell on the recovered memories. Sephiroth remained too dangerous, but he could not avoid the implication in the aftermath. Never able to speak or articulate the fears and concerns. Who would listen and not condemn him? Who could he tell without fear of reaction? Who could possibly sympathise with his truth? The significance of the Mako eyes.

Cloud Strife; a Nibelheim resident who never fit in, who his home-town rejected for reasons long lost. Not someone of Tifa's concern. But he wanted to be in her orbit, in her circle of friends. No doubt some simplistic reasons for that desire aged seven, but another detail lost in the haze of before. Cloud Strife had followed Tifa in the days following her mother's funeral up to the peak of Mount Nibel. Cloud Strife tried to save her. Took the blame in the aftermath, determined to be stronger, to protect those who needed it. To protect Tifa. To become like Sephiroth.

Left home too early, lied about his age. Shinra did not care. They took Cloud in, crushed his dreams and put him to work for their purposes. And by chance sent back home. Too soon. No accomplishments. Unable to do much in the events that followed; sheer luck he halted Sephiroth where he did – and accomplishing a feat that not only delivered him right into Hojo's hands but also armed Sephiroth with the knowledge to push the Planet to the brink. Cloud Strife, SOLDIER wannabe inflicted with the SOLDIER program in a way he could have never perceived.

But Cloud Strife's rejection was for more than one reason. Psychologically he was a poor fit, but deemed able to at least tolerate the process. Physically hopeless. Too weak, various undiagnosed disorders and genetic abnormalities lurked deep down to betray him later in life. Whether a result of so much exposure to the less than safe Mako reactor nearby, or the presence of Jenova, or simply his genetic history beyond anyone's care to explain. When Hojo made him into a SOLDIER, it sealed his fate.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to let Cloud die. To end his agony, let his consciousness and his memories flow back into the Lifestream. As if Hojo was ever capable of mercy. Not when the conundrum persisted; how a rejected SOLDIER applicant, an unremarkable infantry trooper could ever defy and defeat Sephiroth. If there was strength enough already, imagine the benefits of enhancements. Cloud's failure required a compromise. Another version; another Cloud without the frailty and weaknesses.

The library in the Shinra basement had always offered a catalogue of horror in the form of the notes from the Jenova project. Between Hojo's personal codes – and a strict adherence for referring to Jenova and other curiosities by catalogue number – few aware of what information lay there. But after a few revisits, slipping away when he could make the time, he had found the unsettling tome pertaining to his torture. He read it once and destroyed the entire book.

Cloud had a number, the numeral VII tattooed on his hand like the other Sephiroth clones. With that sliver of information, the remainder of the text told a blunt truth. Cloud Strife, tagged on arrival, sample VII. Cloud Strife, Mako treatment commenced. Cloud Strife, genetic sample derived. Cloud Strife, Jenova implantation undertaken. Cloud Strife, sample unusable. Cloud Strife, samples extracted. Cloud Strife, procedures discontinued, sample no longer viable. Recommendation: disposal.

The worst part of all of it.

Cloud was long dead. The how, why and the location of his body was unknown – not for want of trying. The documentation left behind by both iterations of the Jenova project was shoddy and contained multiple gaps – intentional or unintentional impossible to know. The location of the bio-hazards and destroyed samples never noted. A number of searches of the town and mountainside failed to turn up anything that might constitute Cloud's grave. He could only hope for a quick and merciful end. Perhaps his body reduced to ash, and not hidden somewhere, mutilated and desecrated.

But to hope for that was to ignore everything Hojo was and everything Hojo did.

The sun shone, the memories passed by again. With some effort he resisted dwelling on the nightmarish, sickening images of surgical breakdown. Another shake of his head, thoughts begun difficult to dislodge.

They had to know – had always deserved to know. Especially Tifa. The rest might only have known him if not what he was. But Tifa knew Cloud. She deserved to know his fate. To know the entity she lived with and entertained notions about was not a child of Nibelheim.

Not a new thought, but it harder and harder to keep holding back this secret. Hard to keep living, laughing, enjoying his time with Tifa, with this truth lurking at the back of his mind. He had lied so much already both consciously and unconsciously. What would Tifa say? How to broach something like this? Perhaps she would rise to her feet, face contorted in anger or fear, let loose harsh words; an exile from his pleasant home. Well. It would not be the first time he lost a home and perhaps not the last. Not that he had a home as such. Perhaps if it came to it, he could return to the place of his birth.

He made his way back to the Seventh Heaven, trying to find the words to express this most momentous of revelations. Tifa still sketched at the table, glancing up to smile. "I thought you went to buy something?"

"Tifa, I need to talk to you." A hint of confusion but she put her pencil down and met his gaze. "I need to tell you something. And..." Mismatched wooden floorboards; better than facing her. "I-"

Scrape of a chair across the floor, footsteps, motion beside him. "Cloud?" Her voice quiet, calm. "If it's giving you trouble, you don't need to force yourself."

"I do." The table beside him battered, stained and cracked, glitter from one of Marlene's recent art sessions beyond the reach of a dishcloth.

"Something bad?"

He let out a sigh. "Something bad."

A pause. "Take your time. And thank you for coming to me first – not rushing off to Midgar or something." The words stung a little, a reminder of how badly he had handled similar moments in the past. Still unable to look at her, muscles already tensing to carry him out of the bar, out of Edge and out of Tifa's life forever. The faint traces of her body spray in the air thanks to proximity. Where to start?

"I'm not Cloud Strife."

He poured all of it out of him, everything he could remember. He skirted around the grotesque details of the lab, of Cloud's destruction. He admitted how long he had known that the memories he shared with Tifa could not have been his own. He spoke until he ran out of words and an oppressive silence followed. He waited, tensed for the reaction. For the result of his crimes.

"Cloud?" She did not sound angry. Not upset either. Nor did she sound neutral. He glanced up; she smiled. "You are Cloud Strife."

"I'm not. I just-"

"It's your name. You responded to it. How could you be anyone else?"

Missing the point. "Because I'm a clone of him? Because I have his memories? Because I-"

Tifa shrugged. "If I understand the notion of cloning at all, that means you're his duplicate. You are Cloud."

"It's not-" She did not understand still. "It's not like that. I saw him back then. That's how I know." Tifa said nothing; he risked a glance. She stared down at her hands, clasped together in her lap. "I never made or kept that promise."

"No." Tifa shook her head. "No, you didn't." She understood now. The end of his time here. "But you honoured it."

"What?" Confusion. The promise? The words spoken- _Starry night, cold. The creak of the water tower as he climbed, the anxious, tense waiting to see if Tifa would come. The exhilaration and the fear when she did arrive. A childish promise-_ Cloud's memories. Not his.

Tifa reached out for him; his senses numbed as she touched his arm. "You honoured it. It meant something to you."

"Only because of-"

"The memories?" Another shake of her head. "That's more than enough." A crooked smile, her voice soft. "Cloud, it's painful for me to admit it any time I remember. I never knew you – not really – when we were kids."

He nodded. "Not your fault."

She shook her head. "I could have done more to include you but- Doesn't matter. I almost didn't come to the water tower that night." Her smile grew. "Why would I? You were some loner kid who loved getting into fights. Even if we had been remotely close, I would have kept my distance. But maybe it was because of that I went. I couldn't figure out why you'd want to see me."

"Tifa-" Not him again; Cloud instead.

"Let me finish. Please." He nodded. "So I went and we talked, and I know you remember all of that well enough – and it doesn't matter why you remember that." She took a breath. "My other friends who went to Midgar asked me to meet them too. But they were all different to you. They promised to come back rich and famous, sweep me off my feet and let me live in luxury. A bird in a gilded cage; that was their goal. Not yours. You told me you were going but never why. You didn't ask anything of me, didn't seem to expect anything of me. So I asked you for something. You were different. Out of everyone I said goodbye to, you were the only one I asked to help me in a pinch."

She chuckled, the warm sound of Tifa's happiness. The cushioning before the lurch at the end. He opened his mouth; Tifa spoke first.

"And after that- You're the one that stuck in my memory. I remembered you best of all. Had these day-dreams about you, about what it would be like for you to come back a SOLDIER. And somewhere along the line, the idea of the pinch was unbearable; I had to be able to get out of them on my own. So I trained- You know all this. Point is; I started wanting you to just come home. Just to see you again. And its possible I built up this other image of you, just because you're the one I remembered. But when the opportunity came and I thought you hadn't- That was a blow."

"Perhaps I should have come clean-" He muttered. A wince. "Perhaps, he should have come clean."

Tifa seemed not to notice. "Perhaps. But then, would things have gone worse? I know I'm rambling, but I'm getting to the point." She licked her lips. "We are both uncomfortably familiar with what happened after. And I would hope it does not disappoint you to hear I barely thought of you in those five years after. I thought of looking for you, even contemplated going to Shinra, but- No good." She slid her hand down to grip his hand. "I met you in a station in Sector Seven. I didn't know who you were. But you knew exactly who I was."

_The green receding, a familiar woman leaning down over him, concerned. Tifa._ Had recognised her. "I did but-"

"But nothing. Don't you see?" She gripped his hand with both of hers now. "You- The person right here, whose hand I am holding – You're my family now. You're the one I live with, the one I had the adventure with. The one who met Barret, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, Marlene, Aeris, Elmyra, Yuffie, Reno, Rude, Elena, Nanaki, Reeve, Vincent, Cid, Shera, Godo, Dio and, and-" She gestured with her hands. "-so many others. The other Cloud never did that. It's truly sad what happened to him in the end; no one should have to go through anything like that. But while he was sort of my friend and maybe something more could have happened with him it never did. Everything between us happened with you."

His head reeled. His crush on Tifa a constant in his life. Since Cloud's first memories of her. Real or a side effect of how he received the memories, perhaps all squashed into his head in the same interval? Was everything he felt for and with Tifa somehow more recent? "But-"

She enveloped him in a hug. "Cloud, you are loved. And it doesn't matter where you came from. You're more than your memories. Who stayed with me that last night before we confronted Sephiroth?"

"I did." His voice muffled by her shoulder. He had stayed. Nowhere else to go, no one else to see, but if that night was the end, Tifa's company was all he wanted. But the reason-

"Who cared for you after you fell into the Lifestream?"

"You did." _Tifa looking up at him, despairing. The ground shaking, Mideel collapsing around them-_

"Who lives with me now?" This question barely more than a murmur.

The words caught in his throat, but he could find no other way to answer. "I do."

She leant away from him and nodded. "Good." Tifa stepped back, smiling. And somehow he smiled back at her. "That's better. Do you feel better, Cloud?" Impossible to say yet, but he still nodded. She called him Cloud again, and for the first time in a long time it did not feel like someone else's name. Not completely healed, not completely settled, but a good first step.


End file.
